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Target: acquired.Photo: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty

Harry Reid today announced, apropos of Mitt Romney's secretive financial history, “He not only couldn’t be confirmed as a cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as dog catcher. Because a dog catcher, you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns.” Reid apparently means this as a dig at Romney's lack of disclosure. But isn't this really an indictment of the U.S. Senate?

Romney would be an awesome dog catcher. He would set up a world-class communications grid, with response times monitored down to the second, and would hunt down every loose dog, strap them to the roof of his van, and put them down like, well, a dog. Then he would ask who let the dogs out in the first place, and bring those people to justice.

But Reid is probably right that an institution that can't confirm Nobel Prize–winning economists to the Federal Reserve board also probably couldn't confirm a wildly overqualified candidate like Romney, were dog catcher a position that required Senate confirmation. And so we would be enduring stray dogs roaming the streets, biting children and spreading rabies, while Romney languished in the face of a filibuster.